a. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains generally to video production authoring and more specifically to editing and review of edited enhancements for streaming media presentations.
b. Description of the Background
A streaming media program may be accompanied by additional information employed to enhance the program or to provide viewer interaction. Enhancements may include a wide range of information including captioning, multilingual support, advertising, and links through which a viewer may obtain additional information, for example. Enhancements may further include stock updates, news stories, Internet links, weather forecasts, bulletins, statistics, and trivia. For example, a football game may include icons allowing viewing of team players, statistics, trivia and other information such as upcoming games.
Enhanced television content may employ a combination of HTML (hypertext markup language), JavaScript, Java and other formats common to Internet page display. An enhanced display may comprise text, icons, graphics and images placed at locations on or in proximity to the television image. To produce an enhanced display, an author may create an enhancement file identifying each displayed object (such as text, icons, graphics and images), the location where each object is displayed, and the time at which the object may be displayed.
When enhancements are created, it is desirable that they may be reviewed to assure that a desired result has been achieved. In the related art, the practice of editing a program and then viewing the completed enhanced streaming media file over a closed Internet connection results in an awkward and time consuming process. The editing process may be more efficiently accomplished if enhancements are viewed as they are created, allowing the author to focus on one task at a time rather than view enhancements later with the necessary recall of the desired result. Therefore a new method for editing and previewing streaming media enhancements that provides convenient editing and previewing without Internet transmission is needed.